Exact topology discovery algorithm for the capacity and delay constrained loop network

We have developed an exact model and algorithm for the delay-constrained minimum cost loop problem (DC-MCLP) of finding broadcast loops from a source node. While the traditional minimum cost loop problem (MCLP) deals with only the traffic capacity constraint served by a port of source node, the DC-MCLP deals with the mean network delay and traffic capacity constraints simultaneously. The DC-MCLP consists of finding a set of minimum cost loops to link end-user nodes to a source node satisfying the traffic requirements at end-nodes and the required mean delay of the network. In the DC-MCLP, the objective function is to minimise the total link cost. We have formulated the DC-MCLP and proposed an exact algorithm for its solution. The proposed algorithm is composed of two phases: in the first phase, it generates feasible paths to satisfy the traffic capacity constraint; in the second phase it finds the exact loop topology through matching and allocating optimal link capacity to satisfy the mean delay constraint. In addition, we have derived several properties including the memory and time complexity of the proposed algorithm. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed algorithm has good efficiency for networks with less than thirty nodes and light traffic. Our proposed algorithm can be applied to find the broadcast loops for real-time multimedia traffic.